


hold my hand until the waves come

by caelestys



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Memory Loss, Minor Violence, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Time Travel, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 18:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3579732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelestys/pseuds/caelestys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <i>Jesus, how could Bucky forget? Of all the things Hydra made him forget, he could never forget how desperately he loved Steve.</i></p>
<p>He let himself into the apartment and closed the door softly behind him—then was instantly brained over the head by a plate.</p>
<p>The soldier turned, furious. He’d failed the second parameter. Find cover. Lay low, attract no attention.</p>
<p>He would have preferred not to kill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold my hand until the waves come

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: _Jesus, how could Bucky forget? Of all the things Hydra took from him, he could never forget how desperately he loved Steve._

There was a sensation like a gentle, insistent prodding at the back of his mind. Like something was missing, something he was supposed to do—some cloudy, vague mission hanging, just out of reach, over his head. A memory slipping through his fingers.

The Soldier was pretty familiar with that feeling.

He ducked behind the dumpster in the alleyway he’d woken up in. It wasn’t the first time the Soldier woken up somewhere unfamiliar, and the instincts filled the gap in his knowledge.

_Blend in._

_Find cover._

_Wait for instruction._

Four flights up, someone had hung their washing out to dry, and the Soldier leapt up the fire escape, nimble as an alleycat, and snagged a pair of trousers, a white shirt, two sizes too big. No matter; he’d tuck it in, roll up the sleeves—he needed some suspenders—no, wait. Mission non-imperative. Essentials only. No need for suspenders. No calling attention to his arm.

The clothes were loose, but strangely comfortable, familiar in a way his combat pants and kevlar vest had never been. The Soldier folded his shucked clothes under his arm and turned the corner. He knew, suddenly, that there was a store two blocks down on the left that always hung its coats out the front, and he slipped past, snagged a coat, lifted a hat off a passerby and disappeared into the crowd, tucking the ends of his hair in around the brim. It was beginning to turn dusky.

Safe—he needed to get to safety. There was a block of tenement housing, four streets over. The Soldier walked like a magnet pointing north, letting his feet lead him, up, up the stairs, let his body bend and his fingers migrate of their own accord to the brick that he knew, suddenly and without question, hid a small, silver house key. This was new—Hydra programming mission objectives into his head before instructing and releasing him into the world. He was usually left to find his own way.

A thought rose, unbidden. What kind of dumb mook hid a house key under a brick on his front porch?

The soldier flinched, brushed the thought off.

He let himself into the apartment and closed the door softly behind him—then was instantly brained over the head by a plate.

The soldier turned, furious. He’d failed the second parameter. Find cover. Lay low, attract no attention.

He would have preferred not to kill.

The man was small, blonde. The bony knuckles of his fist were abraded, like he’d been in a fistfight recently, and he brandished a knife in the other hand. The Soldier paused to scoff at his soon-to-be short-lived bravery, then shoved him against the door, hands like manacles around his wrists.

The Soldier had forgotten gloves; a minor oversight, but the threat of discovery would need to be neutralized.

The man wriggled against him, swearing, birdlike bones fragile in the Soldier’s fists. The man had dropped the knife, but was beginning to kick. His eyes were a furious, burning blue, his thick eyebrows drawn together fiercely. The Soldier felt a strange, fond warmth spread across his chest, and his hands loosened almost of their own accord.

The man went slack. “Bucky?” he breathed, bewildered.

The Soldier stared at him. “S-Steve,” he said, then shook his head rapidly, trying to clear his foggy head, dislodging the hat and letting his hair fall loosely into his face. The man pulled a hand free and raised it to the Soldier’s face, cautiously, almost wondrously—and for the first time, the Soldier did not flinch away.

“Jesus Christ,” the man named Steve murmured.

The Soldier snarled, confused and furious. He shoved the man named Steve against the door again and held him there, satisfied that the knife was far enough away that he could not attempt disarm him. The Soldier assessed the apartment—one long room bisected by two protruding walls, then a bed against the far wall, underneath two windows facing the street.

The left window got stuck halfway up. The Soldier didn’t know how he knew that, but he would need to aim for the right in order to make a clean, strategic escape. The bottleneck created by the walls was not ideal. The Soldier would need to incapacitate the man named Steve for long enough to get to the other side of the apartment and shimmy through the right-hand window.

He wouldn’t kill the man named Steve.

He couldn’t.

The thought made him feel sick.

“Bucky, what the hell happened?” the man named Steve asked, more urgently. The Soldier turned to him. Perhaps if he broke his wrist or arm—although the Soldier had the feeling this would cause only a minor setback, despite the deceptively small size of the man.

He did not want to cause pain.

The man—Steve—wriggled his wrists free and laid his hands on the Soldier’s neck. The Soldier felt suddenly exposed, but the man’s hands were warm and large, bracketing the line of his jugular. His body language no longer spoke of a wild, animal defensiveness, but an open concern. He was not afraid. Why was he not afraid?

Without a second thought, almost by instinct, the Soldier tipped his head back, exposing his neck. The fight or flight instinct had abated; he was curious to see what Steve would do, but also now surer than ever that Steve would not hurt him, though he could not say how he knew.

What Steve would do turned out to be to push the Soldier carefully backwards towards the bed, until his knees gave out. He knew, before he landed, that the springs would squeak, and one would poke awkwardly up into his thigh. Steve had always hated sleeping in that spot, and usually ended up rolling over to half drape himself over Bucky sometime throughout the night.

Bucky blinked. Undaunted, Steve crawled onto his lap.

Steve should be afraid of him, Bucky thought, even though he knew deep in his bones that he could never hurt him. Silly idiot was never afraid of anything, always fearless the way Bucky wished he could be. It was beginning to come back to him, slowly, as Steve straddled his lap and stared at him, morbidly curious, running his hands over Bucky’s shoulders.

“What happened to you, Buck?” Steve breathed, softly, sadly, pulling aside the buttons of his shirt, revealing the dull gleam of his metal shoulder. “Jesus,” he said, wide eyed.

“There was a train,” Bucky said, haltingly. “I—I think I fell.” He had a abrupt flash of Steve’s horrified face, getting smaller and smaller as Bucky fell away, screaming, and suddenly wanted to hide his face in Steve’s neck. “You were there.”

“You’re away at war,” Steve said, though he looked uncertain, like he wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. He ran his fingers over the seam of Bucky’s metal arm, checking his face for signs of discomfort. The skin was mottled pink and white with scarring. Bucky couldn’t feel Steve’s fingertips but for the ghost memory of the way they had skimmed over his collarbone when it was still whole. Steve tugged the rest of his shirt off and stared at him, mouth open.

“No,” Bucky said, brows crinkling. “It’s 2014.”

Steve sucked in a sharp breath. “Buck. It’s June, 1943. You enlisted over a year ago.”

A sudden panic rose in Bucky’s chest. He didn’t know what Steve was going to do, but he knew, like he’d mysteriously known everything else today, that it was going to be inconceivably stupid, that it was going to lead to Bucky, seventy years later, beating a much larger, harder man with Steve’s beloved face to a pulp—a man with Steve’s beloved face _letting him_ —on a screaming, falling fireball of a Helicarrier, in a world where people could fly with burning wings and the walls had ears and buildings could speak.

He grabbed Steve’s wrist. “You can’t follow me, Steve, you can’t, don’t follow me, I’ll hurt you, you can’t, please—”

Steve looked stunned, then angry. “Did I follow you, where you came from? Is that why you—is that why?” He glanced down at Bucky’s arm with a face painted with desolation. “I’ll follow you everywhere, Buck, you can’t tell me—”

“Yes I _can_ ,” Bucky said, and gripped Steve’s hips so hard, so desperately, that he was scared he’d bruise him. “ _Please_ , Steve.”

“You don’t understand,” Steve said, then leaned to the side and rummaged for something. He pushed a piece of paper into Bucky’s face. There was a 1A stamped proudly on the thick sheet. “I already am.”

Bucky stared at him, aghast. How could Steve be so stupid? He needed to Steve to stay home—he needed Steve to be safe, safe and whole and here for Bucky to come home to. To give Bucky a _reason_ to come home. Steve’s Bucky, the one who was probably currently lying in a trench being shot at, terrified for his life, with his head full of unspoken last goodbyes to Steve. Bucky’s eyes filled with angry tears. He wanted to push Steve away, but Steve wrapped his hands around Bucky’s upper arms, and Bucky couldn’t bring himself to dislodge him.

“I have no idea what’s happening, Buck,” Steve said, pinning him under his gaze. Bucky fell still; he’d forgotten, like he seemed to have done most things, the way Steve’s sharp gaze made him want to snap to attention, fall into line. “But I saw a flying car last week, and now I'm looking at a goddamn metal arm, and that makes me think that if time travel is a possibility in 2014—why else would you be here? If someone sent you back—then it was for a reason.”

He looked stubbornly earnest, and suddenly, Bucky loved him so much, so fiercely, that his heart soared.

Steve laced his fingers with Bucky’s metal ones, and murmured, without looking up, “Maybe that reason is so that I can save you.”

Jesus, how could Bucky forget? Of all the things Hydra took from him, he could never forget how desperately he loved Steve—loved the look of fierce determination on his face, the bone-deep yearning in his own bones when he looked at Steve’s face, the dizzying hop-skip tilt of his heart when he caught Steve looking back.

“I’m gonna catch you, Buck, I promise,” Steve said stubbornly, pushing Bucky down to the bed.

Bucky sighed in defeat; arguing with Steve had always been like facing a down hurricane. Yet, he felt a fluttering hopefulness unfold in his chest. Maybe, just maybe, it would be different this time. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much.

“Let me save you, this time,” Steve murmured. “It’s my turn.”

Bucky curled up around Steve, warm and familiar, and waited for history to rewrite itself.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written Bucky as the Winter Soldier, so this turned out to be a bit of a darker, grittier experiment in his WS voice. Apologies for any geographical/language/other errors. Thanks to the lovely anon who prompted me - the original post is [here](http://caelestys.tumblr.com/post/114126471148/uhm-hi-i-was-wondering-if-i-could-submit-the).
> 
> Title from Grand Unification Part II by Fightstar, which makes for some great angsty angry Bucky music.
> 
> As always, I am [caelestys](http://caelestys.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!


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